


Hands

by tarysande



Series: Rose Trevelyan [4]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-03
Updated: 2014-12-03
Packaged: 2018-02-28 01:55:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2714675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tarysande/pseuds/tarysande
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Commander Cullen has very large hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hands

Commander Cullen has very large hands.

He reaches out to open a door for her, and the handle is dwarfed beneath the touch. Managing to thank him without stammering—a genuine accomplishment, she feels—she tries not to think about how it takes both hands and all her strength to haul open the same portal he manages so effortlessly. Then, as he rests his palms against the pommel of his blade, she tries not to think about how easily he could manage other things with such hands. She turns away before her fair cheeks can betray the absolutely inappropriate tenor of her thoughts. She barely knows him; she shouldn’t be thinking about the scrape of blunt nails or the feel of a swordsman’s callous against soft flesh or wondering if his fingers could touch should he attempt to circle his hands about her waist.

He was a templar. She is a mage. Some thoughts, she’s certain, are doomed only to bring pain on their heels, and disappointment. Besides, it’s entirely possible the world is ending. The mark on her own hand seems proof enough of that.

But despite these self-admonishments, once she’s noticed his hands, she can’t go back to ignorance. And, more than that, she’s not sure she’d want to.

From across the war table, she watches him punctuating his every statement with jabs and sweeps and gestures, and the slightest of smiles pulls at her lips. The language his hands speak is clearer even than the words he chooses. Unlike Josephine and Leliana—and even she, as a scion of the Trevelyan family—he has never learned to modulate that language, never learned to sit on his fingers lest their movements betray secrets or emotions one might wish to keep to oneself. Like the words falling from his lips, the language of his hands is forthright and stalwart, and hides little. He does not play games, Commander Cullen. Hands and words speak the same truths. It’s refreshing, like a cool breeze after a day trapped indoors. She cannot get enough of it.

They are already in Skyhold the first time she sees him without his gloves, and she’s transfixed by the tiny cuts and pale scars that mark his skin. Like the astrariums she sometimes stumbles across in the wild, she finds herself trying to connect the scars the way she attempts to piece together the constellations, wondering at their stories. Most of the nicks are ancient, obviously the echoes of old training wounds. She catches a glimpse of a fresher scar on his palm, and wonders how he got it. She is still turning over ideas like tiles in a game of chance, looking for matches, when he says, “Lady Inquisitor, are you well?” in the distinct tone of someone who has repeated himself several times to no avail. She stammers a quick, graceless response and takes her leave. She feels his eyes on her as she half-trips through the door, but he does not laugh. He does not say anything at all. She could kiss him for that, really, except she’s pretty sure he still knows how to wield a templar’s holy smite.

That night, alone in the solitude and silence of the Herald of Andraste’s bedchamber, all it takes to bring her to a shuddering, whimpering climax is the slip of momentarily imagining his fingers instead of her own. She takes care to skip breakfast the next day, and lunch, and she departs with Varric and Cassandra and Solas to the Hinterlands without once having to face the commander of her armies.

After a few valiant attempts at conversation, even Varric stops trying to engage her. Wrestling with feelings she knows to be inappropriate, she hardly notices. At least closing rifts is straightforward. At least fighting demons is simple.

Everything changes when they come back, when she begins to realize Commander Cullen’s stammering is not avoidance, the shift of his weight from foot to foot is not a symptom of a former templar’s desire to be anywhere but alone with a mage. The words his hands speak are not ones of distress or disgust, and that silent encouragement—Maker, she hopes she’s not misunderstanding—grants her courage to speak words of her own, to launch herself headlong onto a path there’s no turning back from, hoping he’ll meet her halfway.

And he does. Oh, he does.

His hands cupping her face, curling about the slender column of her neck, tangling in the curls of her hair, feel even better than she imagined they might, and they, even they, are nothing to the thrill of his voice in her ear, of his lips on hers.

His hands  _can_  encircle her waist, she discovers, and they are gentler than they look. They trace stories against her skin, whispers and promises so sweet her own hands tremble in response, uncertain where to alight. She breathes a sound something like ‘oh’ and something like ‘yes’ and something very much like ‘more’, and he, ever the gentleman, ever the good soldier, obliges.


End file.
